Sadi casually walked out of the tavern behind her as it crumbled to the ground. It had been a month since she’d raided a crumbling town and despite the fact that she had almost all of the money still, she was extremely bored. She had made her way to six different towns and none of them had given her anything interesting other than cheap alcohol that made good fuel for the fires when she burned down their establishments. She had been very optimistic about this town thanks to the rumors floating around about there being some kind of underground fighting contest, but thus far, no one in town seemed to have heard of anything which only piqued her interest further. If no one was talking about it, that meant everyone knew about it.

To test her theory, Sadi made her way to the center of the town and allowed her shadow to roam free, spreading out all throughout the town, working its way in to every little crack and crevice, worming its way through every inch of the town. At first, it seemed there actually was nothing, but then the shadow came across a strangely bright source of light underground. Sadi quickly rushed to where the light was and found a strange entrance aboveground. There seemed to be an enchantment on it, but Sadi simply rolled her eyes, coating her hand in darkness and opening the door with no trouble. Moving down in to the stairway, she was met with the sound of a very excited crowd.

Sadi quickly rushed down the spiral staircase that led further down in to the earth. Eventually, the stairs opened up in to a corridor with a bright light coming from the end, she couldn’t make out much past the light, but as she walked closer to it, a large room on the other side came in to view. Stepping through the opening and in to the massive room, Sadi was met face to face with the underground fighting contest she had been hearing so much about.

In the center of the room, there was a circular arena about a hundred feet wide with a few leveled platforms. Surrounding the arena were what seemed to be darkness construct bars to keep the combatants from leaving the arena. Sadi scoffed, knowing could she probably break through these bars, but would have no desire to. Surrounding the arena were the seating, seven levels of stone carved right in to the side of this underground tunnel. Sitting around the arena were several hundred spectators, far more than the amount of people who lived in the town that this was based near. On top of that, they seemed to be all different kinds of apprentices, not just the earth apprentices she would have expected from a town in this area.

As she made her way down to sit, no one even seemed to bat an eye which she was thankful for. In the ring, there was a fire apprentice and a darkness apprentice. They both seemed to be relatively skilled fighters, but even while watching, Sadi grew increasingly disappointed with their performance. Each of them were rather slopping despite probably being two or three times older than her. Sadi quickly scanned the arena, trying to locate the person running this whole thing. Eventually, she spotted someone wearing much fancier clothing than anyone else. Next to him was a girl who seemed to be collecting all the bets of those watching.

Getting up, she made her way over to the man and smiled at him. “How do I register to fight?” she asked.

The man looked at his assistant and then back at Sadi before bursting out laughing. Sadi scowled and moved forward, her eyes sparking slightly and her shadow growing sharper. The man held his hands up defensively, still softly chuckling to himself. “What, are you serious, kid? You do realize these are real fighters and we go to KO or death, right?”

Sadi’s eyes sparkled at everything the man said, prompting a bit of concern from him. She reached in to her bag and grabbed 100,000 Etheral, handing it to the manager. “Is this enough to get me in to the next fight?”

The manager raised an eyebrow at the large sum of money, but greedily took it and nodded. “Yup. That’s plenty. Now, why don’t you tell me your name, kid?”

“My name is Sadi Alexandra,” she replied frankly.

The manager shook his head. “No no, I don’t want to know your real name. I want to know your fighter name. I mean, you don’t want anyone hurting your family or something if they know your real name, right?”

Sadi thought for a moment. She doubted anyone would have any drive to track down Alistair and even if they did, she didn’t care. Despite that, it might be fun to give herself a fun name for everyone to call her by. “I want to be called The Queen of Shadows.”

The manager raised an eyebrow, but nodded and wrote it down, motioning towards a door to his left. “The next fight is starting in twenty minutes. Go in their and get changed or stretch or… whatever you need to take care of before you fight.”

Sadi nodded excitedly and made her way over to the door, opening it and heading inside. She was met by another large circular room. This one was much smaller than the arena, but it was emptier, so it felt bigger. Along the walls, there were around fifty or so lockers. She scanned them and found that one of them had her name on it. Opening it up, she found there was a uniform similar to the ones she had seen the other fighters wearing. It was comprised of a simple purple and black shirt that came up to just above her stomach, a pair of short black shorts, and fighting wraps for her hands and feet. She removed her previous attire, tossing it in to the locker and redressing in the fighting uniform, finding that as she put it on, it shifted slightly to better conform to her body. The material was all very soft and easy to move around in.

Now changed and a little bit warmed up, Sadi took a seat on the benches that circled a giant orange crystal in the center of the room, waiting to be called out to fight. She could hear the sounds of the fight still raging on outside, but eventually it ceased and was replaced by a mix of cheering and booing. Sadi hopped to her feet, practically vibrating as the two combatants entered the locker room. They gave her confused looks, but then dismissed her and headed to their lockers. The two of them were pretty badly injured, but there was a spring of healing elixir on one of the walls which they drank from, bringing color back to their skin and beginning to heal up their injuries.

After a short time more of waiting, the manager came in to the locker room and gestured for Sadi. She followed eagerly behind him, the crowd giving a few subdued cheers as they watched her walk by. Sadi was led over to the entrance to the arena and pushed inside. She scowled back at the manager for his unnecessary roughness. Despite that minor annoyance, she was still brimming with excitement.

Standing opposite her on the far side of the arena was the person she was set to fight, a younger man who, from her guess was an earth apprentice. She wasn’t sure if messing with the arena was allowed or not, so she wasn’t certain whether she had the advantage quite yet. He seemed to be maybe ten or so years older than her and was dressed in the same type of outfit except for his shirt was brown and grey and his shorts were grey. His stance was simple, but it was practiced. Sadi knew she would be in for a fairly decent fight from this guy.

“Alright, people, let’s get this next match started! We have a brand-new challenger, The Queen of Shadows!” as he spoke, the manager pointed to Sadi and she smirked, showing off her sharp teeth. “And fighting her will be one of our long-time fighter, Stone Slayer! As always, it’s a single round until one person submits or dies. Are you ready?”

At that, the crowd went wild and Sadi could hear the blood pumping in her ears as she felt her vision tunnel, only able to focus on the fighter ahead of her. The second the manager called for the match to start, Sadi rushed forward at a speed much faster than the earth apprentice had been expecting. Sadi appeared behind him and quickly swept his leg, causing him to fall to the ground. Before he could hit the ground, she shot pointed bolts of shadow out from her shadow circle, but they were blocked by a wall of stone that her opponent had formed to defend.

He backed up and tried to assess the situation from a distance, hoping to have a moment of rest, but Sadi continued her assault and once again rushed towards him. He formed a wall of stone, but she leapt over it. To counter, he turned the wall in to a dome, but Sadi simply dove straight down in to it, her arms cloaked in her construct claws. She slashed through the dome only to find that her opponent had escaped underground. Landing on the ground, she stayed inside of the dome and then quickly spread her shadow all the way across the arena, finding her opponent and sinking down in to the all-encompassing shadow.

She appeared behind him and slashed at him, but he formed his own construct bracers to block her hits and try to deflect the blows as much as possible. He was starting to get nervous though, Sadi was tearing through his bracers and slowly depleting more and more of his essence. Sadi still seemed to be perfectly fine to him, she wasn’t showing any signs of fatigue and even seemed to be slowing down, so he needed to do something more decisive.

After blocking one of her blows, he covered his hand in steel and slammed it back against Sadi with all the strength he could muster. Thankfully for him, she wasn’t as good at defending and she was light due to her age, so she was sent flying across the arena, impacting with the wall and collapsing to the ground.

The crowd went wild, assuming that she was dead and therefore the match was over, but they were wrong. Shakily lifting her head, ears ringing and blood dripping from her face and various other wounds around her body, Sadi was back from the dead. The crowd held their breath as she made her way to her feet. She could hear her heart in her ears even more intensely than before and now it was beating harder, but not from excitement, from rage.

Sadi’s vision was heavily impaired from her injuries, but one thing she could make out as she looked down at her hands was the unmistakable sight of her blood. That mixed with the searing pain coursing through her body caused her to grit her teeth. Something inside of her, at that moment, simply snapped and she was consumed by her rage. In a sudden burst of emotion, glowing purple sparks and flames erupted all around of her accompanied by a torrent of ghostly screams that seemed to be coming from the strange flames.

The audience had fallen silent and Sadi just walked forward slowly towards her opponent. Underneath him, glowing purple eyes had opened all across the giant shadow covering the ground. Reality seemed to distort and flicker before his eyes as all he could see was Sadi, the dark eyes, and an endless expanding darkness where the stands should have been. His heart was beating so fast it might explode as every ounce of paranoia took hold of him.

Even still, Sadi just continued to slowly walk towards him, her cursed eye blazing with sparking purple flames. Eventually, when she did finally reach him, she simply smiled at him and reeled her arm back. He was too scared to react as she slashed through his body. Just as she did, his vision returned to normal. Collapsing to the ground, his newly restored vision began to fade to darkness as his entire body went cold.

In a matter of moments, his body crumbled and faded leaving a small glowing silver flame in its place, his soul fragment. Staring at it, Sadi smiled and picked it up with her constructed-clawed hand. Closing her hand, the flames were extinguished and faded in to sparks of silver which floated upwards for a moment before fading completely. Sadi turned towards the crowd, but before she could say anything, all of a sudden, the screeching, sparking flames that had enveloped her faded and her cursed eye returned to normal. At the same time, Sadi’s vision went completely dark and she collapsed to the ground, losing all consciousness.